People deeply want to believe they are good, reasonable and worthy. A little humility and curiosity can go a long way toward helping someone feel respected during an argument.
Even the best paragraphs may have room for improvement.
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Learning how to produce polished prose can greatly enhance your value on the job.
Comedian Chuck Nice and his daughter crack jokes in a video about a serious topic: climate change.
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Jokes can be a healing contagion as they expose hypocrisy, spark laughter and open minds.
From left: Virginia Woolf, Rachel Cusk (Vianney Le Caer/AP), Maggie Nelson (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – also background), Jane Gleeson-White (Pauline Futeran).
When Jane Gleeson-White’s marriage ended two years after her mother died, she lost her voice. Books by women writers like Rachel Cusk, Olivia Laing and Maggie Nelson helped her find it again.
The indictment of Donald Trump and an aide was ‘laced with rhetorical and narrative techniques.’
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Department of Justice prosecutors could have composed a technocratic document intelligible only to other criminal law insiders when indicting Donald Trump in the documents case. They did much more.
Showing you’re listening is a critical part of fraught discussions.
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Researchers have identified ways to have more productive conversations – even when you’re talking to someone who holds an opposite view.
‘Rhetoric’ has a bad rap – but some of the original rhetoricians’ techniques can actually help foster productive conversations.
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Ryan Leack, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Ancient Greek philosophers despised the Sophists’ rhetoric because it searched for relative truth, not absolutes. But learning how to do that thoughtfully can help constructive debates.
Sure, you can try to force people to agree with you – but respectful persuasion is something else.
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The use of “gamification” in stock trading and other apps raises new legal challenges. Existing legal tools should be adapted to meet these challenges.
When persuasion stops and violence begins, that’s the line between ‘legitimate political discourse’ and something very different, scholars explain.
AP Photo/John Minchillo
We’ve all heard an exasperated “do your research!” from people who want to persuade us to accept their claim or point of view. The problem is it’s not likely to convince anyone.
There are a variety of reasons why people do or don’t want to be vaccinated. Depending on how they frame their messaging around vaccination, doctors can often be the deciding factor.
Images of death have been used as a scare tactic in public health campaigns for years.
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Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Digital Academic Initiatives (University of Michigan Law School) | Visiting Lecturer (University of Chicago Law School) | Visiting Lecturer (UCLA School of Law), University of Michigan